Make Your Own Butterfly Costume

This adorable, kid-pleasing and easy to make butterfly costume is a great last-minute Halloween costume. This is a fun activity that you and your child can do together, to celebrate the holiday and help your child build her fine motor skills too! This a great costume idea for a young scientist or a child that just loves bugs and you can talk to your child about butterflies while you make the costume. Use the same idea with a few added details to make a bee costume, fairy costume or dragonfly costume as well.

What You Need:

• Black top (or leotard) and and black leggings
• Stretchy headband
• 2 thick black chenille pipe cleaners
• 2 sheets of posterboard in your child’s favorite color
• Glue
• Glitter, tissue paper, decorative paper and other decorative materials
• Scissors
• Ribbon

What to Do:

1. Start by making your antennae. Help your child wrap one end of a pipe cleaner around the headband so that it stands up. Position the other pipe cleaner a few inches away (so that they look like antennae) and do the same thing.
2. Help your child cut out two large wing shapes from your posterboard. In order to make them match, you can cut one out and use it as a model for cutting the second wing. If you're not sure about the shape of a butterfly wing, check out Google images for ideas or look at a picture book about butterflies with your child.
3. Fasten the wings together by lining up the straight edges of each wing with one another so that there is a seam where the two wings join together. Run a narrow strip of posterboard or sturdy paper up the center seam of the wings and glue it in place to hold them together.
4. Once the glue has dried, have your child decorate her wings. She can use real butterflies as her model or just go crazy with whatever you and your child can come up with. When she's finished decorating her wings, set them aside to dry.
5. Once they’ve dried, cut two slits in each wing, the first about five inches from the top and the second two to three inches below the first, for a total of four holes (two in each wing). For each wing, slip some ribbon through the two slots creating a strap on the inside face of the wings that will fasten around your child’s shoulder.
6. When she's ready to trick-or-treat, and she’s dressed in her black butterfly body, tie the wings to her shoulders and help her put her antennae on. She's a butterfly!